5 Tips on Improving Your Skyscraper Content

Skyscraper content has earned a reputation of being an effective medium in increasing click throughs and site traffic. In short, it’s known to be a reliable SEO tactic.

However, this resulted to a lot of sites coming out with guide posts with over 10k words, promising to give you everything “you need to know about” this and that. And while some truly offer substantial content, most of these just comprise of a whole lot of nonsense fillers and cringeworthy copies.

At the end of the day, this makes a skyscraper content ineffective, especially if it doesn’t really convert readers into buyers. So how do you create a skyscraper content that truly engages and well, one that doesn’t suck?

Here are 5 tips to improve your skyscraper content that you can work on right now:

1. Make Headlines Out of Subheads

Apply what you know about crafting engaging headlines into how you write your paragraph subheads. It should say more with less, but it should also give a clear picture of what’s about to go down in the paragraph following the subhead.

Headlines are supposed to intrigue and catch the attention of the reader right off the bat. If your subhead is vague and unsubstantial, you can pretty much bet that the reader would just skip right through probably until the very end of your skyscraper piece. So instead of simply saying, “Grow Your Audience With Quality Content,” perhaps you can try a little more headline-worthy subhead like, “Rouse Your Audience’s Interest with Content that Clicks.” It may not be perfect but it’s something that would make your readers pause and have a read.

2. Say More By Writing Less

It’s a given that a skyscraper piece requires a very high word count–one that’s much higher than your regular average blog post. And given this word count requirement, a lot of copywriters tend to just fill in as much fillers as they can, which bores readers to no end.

Using fillers can be appropriate sometimes, but not most of the time. If you can be more succinct and tell them straight with just a few words, then do it.

If it reads, “As you may already know, writing a skyscraper content can help your site increase page views and overall foot traffic.” Maybe you can reconsider and dial it down a bit by saying, “Writing a skyscraper content can help increase your site’s foot traffic.” More succinct, more readable, more engaging.

3. Don’t Make It About You

Readers only care about themselves and what you have to offer them. This is why there’s no point in making your skyscraper content about you and what you think.

Sure, you may be an expert giving legit advice through your skyscraper content. But you have to still make it about the readers. So how exactly do you do it? By taking yourself out of it and not drawing any attention towards you. You can do this by not using “I or we.” Use “you” as much as you can–pretty much how this post you’re reading right now goes.

4. Transform Boring Topics With a Little Wit

You can do better than sounding like a Wikipedia page. Most topics that uses skyscraper structure are not that exciting and mostly technical. But even if that’s the case, don’t resort to sounding like an encyclopedia and try to inject a little wit and creativity to make it more fun to read.

For example, you can easily find several skyscraper pieces on SEO strategies. A lot of these would include technical terms, which are just all too boring to read. Case in point, a sentence might read: “Putting these SEO strategies into effect can contribute in improving your site’s ranking and lead conversions.” Did you just yawn reading that? So did we.

Maybe you can turn it into something like this: “Using these SEO strategies play a big role in higher rankings and increased sales!” What it all boils down to is how you re-craft your message and making it more exciting for your readers.

5. Pay Attention to Sentence Length, Sequence, and Pacing

Just like with how songs have a certain pace and build-up that rouses emotions to its listeners, your skyscraper piece also needs to have the right sentence length, sequence, and pacing.

The best way to do this is to start short.

And then slowly build it up with relevant information to support your message.

Once you’ve gotten hold of their attention, you can move on to writing complex structures that include technical information, comprising the very meat of your skyscraper piece. (See what happened there?)

Conclusion

Skyscrapers are really effective if you know how to do it right–and not just for the sake of wanting more clicks.

A lot of planning and preparation goes into it before you hit publish. But the best way to truly make it as effective as it can be is to pay attention to the writing.

It’s about the information you present and how you present it to your readers. It’s both the content and the structure–the information and how you craft it and deliver to your audience.

Pay attention to these details and you’ll see your site get indexed and ranked. Not to mention, it’s what makes customers who actually buy out of mere readers.